Re: GNOME Accessibility on by default, and Firefox

[Tom Masterson <kd7cyu yahoo com>]

I don't consider your comments snarky.  However at least in my world at
home my wife often uses my computer and turns off the screen reader
because it getsin her way.  I have taken years to get her in the habit
of turning it back on.  At the office colleagues may borrow one of my
computers to do something as I do have build applications that only run
on my box do to accessibility issues on servers etc or because we are
evaluating or something.  As a blind user I often use the console unless
I am forced to use gnome because I prefer only braille and the console
is much more responsive even in a poor ncurses app than many gnome apps.
Speed and responsiveness are issues we need to consider and if amking
the setting dynamic helps all the better.  It also will help for the new
user because they won't have to think about setting it up.  We do need
to think of the average user or even the less than average user.  When I
learned programming many years ago I was taught that my Grandma should
be able to run it and believe me...  The KISS principle still holds and
the less the user has to do to make it work the better off we are and
the more accepting the public will be most "just want it to work".

So back to my main point.  I don't think that AT being onn and off at
different times is all that much an edge case and certainly needs to be
considered and handled in as transparent a method as possible.

Tom

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 05:22:35PM -0400, Willie Walker wrote:
> Thanks Tom!
>
> I hope my e-mails are not being taken as being too snarky.  I'm really  
> trying to understand the use case.  From what I can tell, a use case  
> based upon what you describe might be a public information kiosk that is  
> unable to reset itself.  Or, perhaps a user has varying levels of  
> accessibility needs throughout the day.  Or, maybe someone is just  
> giving a demo.
>
> So, a user might come along and use an assistive technology and then  
> exit it.  As a result, the system might be left in a state where  
> accessibility remains in use.  These seem like edge cases, but are worth  
> considering.  I'd guess that the majority of real world use cases,  
> however, are where the user needs accessibility enabled every day, all  
> day, for every application.
>
> Note that I'm not necessarily encouraging or supporting the current  
> you-get-it-or-you-don't behavior of GNOME.  I'd much prefer NOT to have  
> a gconf setting to enable accessibility, and I would prefer it to be a  
> bit more dynamic.  With the current architecture, I think we can get  
> *close* to this with some extra work.  My main point was that I believe  
> it will require work in the thing talking to ATK (e.g., GAIL, Gecko,  
> OOo, etc.) and is independent of the D-Bus work.
>
> But, I might be missing something,
>
> Will
>
> Tom Masterson wrote:
>> Here is my understanding of this thread that I have been quietly watchig
>> from the sidelines.
>>
>> WHat is being asked for is something closer to the windows model.  In
>> other words if accessibility is needed by an AT app like orca then it is
>> started and runs.  However if it is not needed it is not being used.
>> THis can be important on a computer used by many people where one wants
>> accessibility and one does not.  In windows you simply shut down the
>> screen reader and the lag it introduces goes away which is not the case
>> in Gnome as far as I can tell.
>>
>> Ideally of course there would be no difference between having an AT
>> program running and not but given that there is extra proccessing
>> involved that isn't likely to happen.
>>
>> DOn't know if that is a correct reading but it is my understanding.
>>
>> Tom
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 04:23:51PM -0400, Willie Walker wrote:
>>>> BTW, I'm not sure about the details of what the Gecko
>>>>> implementation does, but it would surprise me if it *always* loaded the
>>>>> accessibility modules regardless of the gconf setting.
>>>> Afaik we do just use the gconf setting, which is the problem. Then 
>>>> we  start creating accessible objects, firing extra events, doing 
>>>> extra  processing for DOM mutations, lalala. What other check 
>>>> should we use  before turning it on?
>>> To be clear, if the gconf setting is not set, then no accessibility   
>>> support will be enabled in Firefox.  Is that right?
>>>
>>> If so, I'm confused.  By enabling accessibility, the user is saying 
>>> they  want accessibility enabled.  But, it seems like the argument 
>>> being made  here is that even if the user enables accessibility, they 
>>> really don't  want it.
>>>
>>> I think I might have missed the actual use case (I've been out of the 
>>>  country for the past week).  Can you describe why someone would call 
>>> to  order pizza and then complain when it is delivered?  Seems to me 
>>> they  should not have ordered it in the first place.  ;-)
>>>
>>>>  > However, *something* needs to already be awake so that an assistive
>>>>  > technology can discover the top level application object in the  
>>>> first  > place.
>>> ...
>>>> Any time any app asks for even the root accessible object for a 
>>>> given  window, that window receives a signal.
>>> This may be the case on Windows, but I don't believe it is the case 
>>> for  GNOME.
>>>
>>> Will
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
>>> gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
>>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
>> gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>